George Grey Barnard (May 24, 1863 – April 24, 1938), often written George Gray Barnard, was an American sculptor who trained in Paris. He is especially noted for his heroic sized Struggle of the Two Natures in Man at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, his twin sculpture groups at the
Pennsylvania State Capitol, and his Lincoln statue in Cincinnati, Ohio. His major works are largely symbolical in character.[1] His personal collection of
medieval architectural fragments became a core part of
The Cloisters in New York City.
Biography
Barnard was born in
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, but grew up in
Kankakee, Illinois, the son of the Reverend Joseph Barnard and Martha Grubb; the grandson and namesake of merchant George Grey Grubb; and a great-grandson of Curtis Grubb, a fourth-generation member of the
Grubb iron family and a onetime owner of the celebrated
Gray's Ferry Tavern outside Philadelphia.
Barnard first studied at the
Art Institute of Chicago under
Leonard Volk.[2] The prize he was awarded for a marble bust of a Young Girl enabled him to go to Paris,[3] where, over a period of three and half years, he attended the
École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1883–1887), while also working in the atelier of
Pierre-Jules Cavelier. He lived in Paris for twelve years, and scored a great success with his first exhibit at the
Salon of 1894. He returned to America in 1896, and married Edna Monroe of Boston. He taught at the
Art Students League of New York from 1900 to 1903, succeeding
Augustus Saint-Gaudens.[2] He returned to France, and spent the next eight years working on his sculpture groups for the Pennsylvania State Capitol.[2] He was elected an associate member of the
National Academy of Design in 189x, and an academician in 1902.
A strong
Rodin influence is evident in his early work. His principal works include the allegorical Struggle of the Two Natures in Man" (1894, in the
Metropolitan Museum, New York); The Hewer (1902, at Cairo, Illinois); The Great God Pan (1899, at Columbia University); the Rose Maiden (
c.1902, at Muscatine, Iowa); the simple and graceful Maidenhood (1896, at Brookgreen Gardens).
The Great God Pan (1899), one of the first works Barnard completed after his return to America, was originally intended for the
Dakota Apartments on Central Park West.
Alfred Corning Clark, builder of the Dakota, had financed Barnard's early career; when Clark died in 1896, the Clark family presented Barnard's Two Natures to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in his memory, and the giant bronze Pan was presented to Columbia University, by Clark's son,
Edward Severin Clark.
In 1911 he completed two large
sculpture groups for the new
Pennsylvania State Capitol: The Burden of Life: The Broken Law and Love and Labor: The Unbroken Law. Between the two groups, they feature 27 larger-than-life figures.
French art dealer
René Gimpel described him in his diary (1923), as "an excellent American sculptor" who is "very much engrossed in carving himself a fortune out of the trade in works of art."[5] Barnard had a commanding personal manner: "He talks of art as if it were a cabalistic science of which he is the only astrologer", wrote the unsympathetic Gimpel; "he speaks to impress. He's a sort of
Rasputin of criticism. The Rockefellers are his imperial family. And the dealers court him."[6]
George Grey Barnard is a Westerner, although he chanced to be born in Pennsylvania, where his parents were temporarily residing in 1863. The sculptor's father is a clergyman, and the fortunes of the ministry afterward led him to Chicago, and thence to Muscatine, Iowa, where the son passed his boyhood. One cannot doubt that these circumstances had their profound influence upon the character of the young artist. In it is something of the largeness of the western prairies, something of the audacity of a life without tradition or precedent, a burning intensity of enthusiasm; above all, a strong element of mysticism which permeates all that Barnard does or thinks.
The stories of his student struggles in Chicago and Paris are familiar. The first result of all this self sacrifice became tangible in that early group, a tombstone for Norway, in which the youth portrayed "Brotherly Love," a work of "weird and indescribable charm."
In 1894 Barnard completed his celebrated group, Two Natures, upon which he had toiled, in clay and marble, for several years. This achievement gave him at once high standing in Europe, and his work has been of interest to the cultivated public of the world's capitals. Then followed an extraordinary Norwegian Stove, a monumental affair illustrative of Scandinavian mythology; and Maidenhood and the Hewer.
The great work of Barnard's recent years has been the decoration of the Pennsylvania capitol. It has been said of him that he was "the only one connected with that building who was not smirched"; but his part is a story of heroism and triumph. The writer has not yet seen the enormous groups in place, but is familiar with fragments that have won the enthusiastic praise of the best sculptors of Paris. They are inspiring conceptions which point the way to still mightier achievements in American sculpture.[10]
Selected works
The Boy (marble, 1885), private collection
Cain (1886, destroyed)
Brotherly Love (Two Friends) (marble, 1886–87), Langesund, Norway.
A plaster version is at Schwab Auditorium, Pennsylvania State University, University Park.[22]
A marble version is at
Kykuit, Pocantico Hills, New York.
Architectural sculpture (1902–03),
New Amsterdam Theatre, 214 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, New York City. Barnard's façade and roof garden sculptures were removed in 1937, and are unlocated.[23]
The Prodigal Son (1904). One of the sculptures for Love and Labor: The Unbroken Law, at the Pennsylvania State Capitol.
The George Grey Barnard Sculpture Garden was created in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania (his birthplace) in 1978.[37]
Notes
^In December 2015, a plaster of a hand, a preliminary study for Barnard's 1917 Abraham Lincoln, was stolen from the Kankakee County Museum.[34] In January 2016,
Stephen Colbert mentioned the theft on the Late Show.[35] The hand was returned to the Museum in February 2017, after being found at a local church. The thief was never identified.[36]
^
abc"George Grey Barnard (1863–1938)," in Lauretta Dimmick and Donna J. Hassler. American Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: A catalogue of works by artists born before 1865. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. pp. 421–27.
[1]
^Noyes, Platt, Official Illustrated Catalogue, Fine Arts Exhibit, United States of America, Paris Exposition, 1900, (U.S. Commission to the Paris Exposition, 1900), p. 94.
^
abClaudia Cook, "Case of the Unknown Sculptures," Daily Collegian (Penn State University), November 12, 1982.
[2]
^Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, The Landmarks of New York, Fifth Edition: An Illustrated Record of the City's Historic Buildings (SUNY Press, 2011), p.420.
Harold E. Dickson, ed. George Grey Barnard: Centenary Exhibition, 1863–1963 (exh. cat. Pennsylvania State University, 1964).
Sara Dodge Kimbrough, Drawn from Life: The Story of Four American Artists Whose Friendship & Work Began in Paris During the 1880s, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1976.
Susan Martis, "Famous and Forgotten: Rodin and Three Contemporaries," Ph.D. dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2004.
Frederick C. Moffatt, Errant Bronzes: George Grey Barnard's Statues of Abraham Lincoln, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998.
"The George Grey Banard Collection," Philadelphia Museum Bulletin 40, no. 206 (1945): [49]–[64].
Robinson Galleries, The George Grey Barnard Collection, New York: The Galleries, 1941.
Nicholas Fox Weber, The Clarks of Cooperstown: Their Singer Sewing Machine Fortune, Their Great and Influential Art Collections, Their Forty-Year Feud, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.